Terraria – I can’t switch into hardmode but I can break altars and no hollow spawned

While this might not be practical or possible in all situations I was able to get through this in about an hour after dying a lot.

Since I was located inside my base my stored items were in close vicinity. Enemies would follow me and in a general sense be drawn to my location of death as well. I would move my character, 20-30 squares when I was lucky, away from my base to give me a little lead time ahead of some of the goblins. This proved useless against the wizards but after a few tries I gained enough time to get to a chest in the opposite direction.

However I only had time to remove one ... sometimes two at a time. I selected a flail and a yoyo on a separate occasion. Trick at this point was to move as little as possible with the exception of jump dodging. I would get in a hit or two before I died.

Now when I would re-spawn I would instantly be equipped with a weapon which usually occupied the same slot. Sometime I would pick us spike balls so that death would accomplish nothing. Many deaths were for not and I could not get any hits in either due to knockback or appearing in front of projectiles.

After a long period of working like this the army was defeated and the summoner eventually de-spawned and did not need to be killed. (Would only have been a matter of time before she perished before my infinite lives though)

In the end I lost nothing but some time in my actual life.

I see two possibilities:

• You were not in the Underworld (where you see the background with the rivers of lava). Dropping the doll into lava in higher layers does not work.
• You think you threw the doll but you actually tried to use it by selecting it on the hotbar or picking it up and then right-clicking. Throwing is a different action (usually on the 't' key). If you see the doll fly into the lava and it's gone from your inventory, then you threw it.